SportsRatings 2014 College Football Pre-season Top 128
| Washington Huskies (Pac-12 #5; North #3) |
 #19 |
2013 Results |
AP #25 USA #24 | Strength:#7 Success:#27 Overall:#17 |
| Record: 9-4 | Bowl: beat BYU 31-16 (Fight Hunger) |
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| 2014 Outlook |
Picks: AP #25 | USA #25 | Lindy's #23 | Athlon #24 | Steele #28 | ||
| Record: 9-4 | Bowl odds: 93% Playoff odds: <1% | ||
Washington begins a new era under Chris Petersen, and it should start pretty well.
| Offense 7 ret. starters |
2013 Scoring Offense: #19 (raw) #15 (adjusted for opposition) |
| 2014 Projected Scoring Offense: #17 (adjusted) |
It might not look like the offense falls much by the rankings, but that's just a fluke; that area of the offensive ranking has wide spacing, and a few spots there is quite a bit of a drop.
| Passing Game |
2013 Passing Rank: #38 (raw) #33 (adjusted) | 2013 Sacks Allowed (adj.): #89 |
| 2014 Projected Passing Rank: #66 (adjusted) |
2014 Sacks Allowed (proj.): #44 |
Keith Price (2,966 yards, 21 TDs, 6 int) moves on and Cyler Miles (418 yards, 4:2) will take over—at least, in the 2nd game after serving a 1-game suspension for fighting on Super Bowl night. He'll be without #1 receiver Kevin Smith (765 yards) but Jaydon Mickens (688 yards) is back along with Kasen Williams (#4 w/421 last year, #1 w/878 in 2012). Still, those are the only two of the top six back. The offensive line should help Miles acclimate, however, as all five starters return and sacks allowed should drop precipitously from last year's 30. Despite Miles' hyped recruiting ratings we see the passing numbers dropping due to losing Price, Smith, and tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins.
| Rushing | 2013 Rushing Rank: #16 (raw) #14 (adjusted) | 2014 Projected Rushing Rank: #16 (adj.) |
Bishop Sankey (1,870 yards, 20 TDs) was one of the best running backs in college football last year, and he's gone. Washington had four players who topped 200 yards and all of them are back, including #2 Dwayne Washington (332) who might lead more of a committee approach this year. The offensive line should be one of the nation's best this year as all five starters return. Seniors Mike Criste, Colin Tanigawa, Ben Riva, and Micah Hatchie return with junior Dexter Charles and they could lead the running game to nearly match last year's total. Note that QB Miles had 200 yards—and an 8.7 average—in limited action last year, so if he plays the full year they'll get a lot of yardage from that position.
| 2013 Adjusted Stats: | Rush Defense: #38 Pass Defense per-game: #13 Per-attempt: #8 | ||
| Defense 7 ret. starters |
'13 Scoring Defense: #33 (raw) #11 (adjusted) | '13 sacks: #7 | '13 picks: #42 |
| '14 Projected Scoring Defense: #7 (adjusted) |
'14 sacks: #2 | '14 picks: #36 | |
The Washington defensive line returns Hau'oli Kikaha (13 sacks) and Cory Littleton (5 sacks), and Andrew Hudson (6.5 sacks in 2012) is a backup; we see the team having one of the strongest pass rushes in the nation (41 sacks last year); they do lose Josh Shirley (6.5 sacks in 2012) who left the team. The secondary should be weaker, however, as they lose three starters. They do have Marcus Peters (5 interceptions) back, so while their pass defense won't be top ten quality it won't collapse and they should come close to last year's 16 picks. Overall the defense returns 7 of its top 9 tacklers and might even be better than last year (#33 raw but #11 when adjusted for score-happy Pac-12 schedule).
Special Teams/Situations
- Kicking Game: Punter/kicker Travis Coons departs; he averaged 40.4 yards per punt and connected on 15 of 16 field goal attempts.
- Return Game: John Ross (23.2 average on kickoff returns; one touchdown) is back along with punt fielder Marvin Hall (9.4 yards per attempt).
- Turnovers projection: Keith Price threw just 6 picks in 352 attempts last year; Cyler Miles threw 2 in 61; Miles will probably throw a lot more than 6 this season.
- Injury correction: The defense had very few injuries last year and if that catches up to normal this year it downgrades the unit slightly.
Coaching/Recruiting 2014 Recruiting Rank: #42 2013 Recruiting Rank: #16
This year's recruiting class suffers from the coaching-transition-year blues; we'll have to see how Chris Peterson does next year. Of course, even though this class is only average for the Pac-12 it's better than almost any of his Boise State classes. Peterson has quite a reputation to live up to, perhaps more than any coach who has moved up to the "big time." Until last year's 8-5 Peterson had 7 years of double-digit wins including two undefeated seasons and three more with just 1 loss. Things didn't work out very well for the last Boise State coach—Dan Hawkins—who stepped up to a BCS program; Colorado still hasn't recovered. But it might have been Peterson who was responsible for Boise's success all along. It will be interesting to see what he can do here.
2013 Recap
Washington beat Boise State (whose coach they would end up poaching) 38-6, getting revenge for the bowl loss at the end of the 2012 season. Illinois was more trouble than expected, 34-24, but they beat Idaho State 56-0 and Arizona 31-13. Their first test was Stanford and they hung with them all game before falling 31-28. Their 2nd test, Oregon, was a worse loss at 45-24 and Arizona State the worst, 53-24. They won 4 of the last 5 but didn't get the big wins (lost to UCLA 41-31) and were relegated to the Fight Hunger Bowl where they prevailed over BYU 31-16.
Last year's prediction: We picked Washington high at #12, and they actually exceeded that by finishing #7 in Strength—but they didn't win the big games and ended up #27 in Success and barely in the AP Top 25. But despite our lofty ranking we still projected only an 8-4 record for the Huskies, which they matched. We got one of the losses wrong—they fell to UCLA, not Oregon State—but all in all our call for a very improved team with a marginally improved record was right on target.
2014 Outlook
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Washington 2014 schedule & forecast |
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| 8/30 | Sat | @ | Hawaii | 94% | W | |||
| 9/6 | Sat | vs. | Eastern Washington | 94% | W | |||
| 9/13 | Sat | vs. | Illinois | 93% | W | |||
| 9/20 | Sat | vs. | Georgia State | 99% | W | |||
| 9/27 | Sat | vs. | *Stanford | 52% | W | |||
| 10/11 | Sat | @ | *California | 71% | W | |||
| 10/18 | Sat | @ | *Oregon | 17% | L | |||
| 10/25 | Sat | vs. | *Arizona State | 61% | W | |||
| 11/1 | Sat | @ | *Colorado | 81% | W | |||
| 11/8 | Sat | vs. | *UCLA | 25% | L | |||
| 11/15 | Sat | @ | *Arizona | 53% | W | |||
| 11/22 | Sat | vs. | *Oregon State | 67% | W | |||
| 11/29 | Sat | @ | *Washington State | 61% | W | |||
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Straight up: 11-2 Cume: 9-4 Bowl eligible: 93%
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Washington plays a 13-game schedule this year and under the best of circumstances we see them winning 11 of them. That gives them tossup games against Stanford and at Arizona. It also assumes they beat Arizona State and Oregon State at home, and win the Apple Cup at Washington State, three pretty big assumptions.
What we can probably safely assume is that Washington can beat Hawaii, Eastern Washington, Illinois, and Georgia State in their first four games. Once again their first test is Stanford. After that they should beat California, but then they travel to Oregon, a tall order to say the least.
After ASU they have Colorado on the road before hosting UCLA, another very tall order. The final three games are also tough as covered above; in all, the cumulative projection calls for a 9-4 season, so assume they'll lose one of the tossup games and be upset somewhere else.
Even if they get past Oregon and Stanford and win the North division they'll probably have to face UCLA again to win the Pac-12, so their odds of reaching the College Football Playoff are pretty muted; we give them almost a 1% chance. But they have nearly a 50% of having a 10+ win season after counting their possible bowl win; it would be their first 10+ win season since 2000.
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